


all you love, you keep

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, POV Keith (Voltron), POV Shiro (Voltron), Secret Marriage, Slow Burn, protip: confess before the wedding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-01 22:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13304775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Love isn’t earned in blood and devoted silence, but it takes them years to figure that out."I don't have anyone else," Shiro starts, and that at least is honest. "But we can only have family at the launch. We can only talk to family on the mission, and you—it would just be a technicality. We can dissolve it when I get back, but—“Keith is so open, and so unwitting. He’s got a blind spot for Shiro as wide as his heart.“Will you marry me?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Всё, что любишь, то твоё](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13670376) by [timmy_failure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timmy_failure/pseuds/timmy_failure)



> I started out writing this wanting it to be a crack fic about them being married the whole time and the team trying to figure out their relationship. It turned into something pretty different. There should be three to four parts! 
> 
> As always, I promise this has an unambiguously happy ending. Hopefully all said and done it'll be more joy than pain.
> 
> [[on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/169715324540/does-keith-kno-how-much-shiro-loves-him)]

0

It's by chance that he sees it at all. Keith isn't careless, and he's taken care to hide this. He must have, because it's months into their adventure before Lance sees it for the first time: he's wearing dog tags.

Keith is beat to shit, passed out in exhaustion and pain while they wait for an extraction and Lance wasn't there to watch, but whatever went down was bad enough that his black flight suit is ripped and glistening with fresh blood where it's visible, all the way up. The silver chain around his neck is hanging loose against the red and dirtied white of his paladin armor, a single silver tag hanging from it, smeared red.

It's weird, because the Garrison didn't hand out dog tags to cadets. It's weird because the last name isn't his.

"Pidge."

She glances over, looking tired as he feels. "Is he ok?"

He nods. No, Keith's not ok, but he's not going to die—Keith’s stubborn like that. He beckons and Pidge stumbles over to where he’s lying prone on the pile of wreckage that's serving as a makeshift sickbed. It takes a moment for her to pick up on what he’s looking at, but she's sharper than Lance and quick in every way.

"Shirogane? But..." She frowns.

The familiar roar of a Lion interrupts them before they can talk. Shiro, finally—the Black Lion breaking through the low cloud cover, dwarfing every other threat on the planet. The engines blow their hair back as Shiro sets it down right on top of them, daring anything to come within range of its crushing power and fury. It's barely touched down before Shiro is jumping out of the hatch, beating a path toward them. He’s fast when he wants to be, and the moment he sees Keith, his whole demeanor changes.

"Keith?" Shiro asks when he gets to them, more gasp than question, kneeling next to him.

"He's ok," Lance assures him. "Just got tossed around a little."

Shiro shoots him a look—it's piercing and about as far from comforted as possible. He turns Keith's face, talking too low and fast to be heard. The words aren't meant for them, Lance realizes. The whole scene is too intimate, too familiar, like so much between them.

Keith comes awake under his hands. He seizes up, coughs wetly, and says something garbled and soft. Shiro nods and gets an arm around his back, pausing to tuck the ball chain back under Keith's armor with a glance before he gathers him up in his arms.

"I've got you," he says—to himself because Keith is passed out again or as good as. Pidge and Lance tail him back to the lion, too dulled by fatigue to process anything beyond the white lines of his armor, following him through the smoke and wreckage.

When they get to the lion, Shiro sits down with Keith on his lap, curled against his chest, like that’s normal and rote and he can actually pilot with a grown man sprawled across his arms.

He manages to get them off the ground somehow, and when Lance offers to hold on to Keith so maybe Shiro can have a chance in hell of piloting them off the planet and avoiding the fleet of Galra fighters that are winging toward them, Shiro shoots him a look and does it anyway. He takes out everything that gets in their way, with prejudice and a kind of anger Lance isn't used to seeing from him.

When they're safe in open space, beelining for the castle in a violet streak, Shiro doesn't move. He stays right there, holding Keith, and Lance can't see his face but the hunch of his shoulders is wrecked like he was on the mission with them instead of playing back up—like he's as tired as they feel. Lance and Pidge lean against the back wall of the cockpit, staring dully at the scene in front of them, not really processing it. Keith's dark head is barely visible past Shiro’s arm, but from what he can see, Keith’s out cold.

The white of Shiro’s armor is streaked dark where Keith’s hair dragged across it.

“How's he doing?”

Shiro doesn't answer, not for a long, nervous moment. When he does, his voice cuts.

“He's passed out," he almost snaps, and Lance isn't sure who the edge of it is meant to bleed. It's not an answer, not really, but there's no real accusation in it either—only anger.

“Sorry,” Shiro continues after a moment and an audible breath. “Can you tell me what happened?”

What else? Keith threw himself at something bigger. Almost everything is.

“He gave us time to get the info and get out,” Lance paraphrases. It's true in technical terms. The mission was fact-finding more than combat; Pidge on tech, Lance on point, Keith on—whatever Keith is always on. They weren’t supposed to encounter any Galra, but they’re never that lucky. Lance and Pidge caught the better part of Keith’s fight over the radio, but Keith wasn’t exactly forthcoming on specifics. By the time he found them, he was bloody-mouthed and wild-eyed, but they got the tech. Whatever he did, it worked.

It worked, at cost.

The part that doesn’t fit, Lance thinks past the fatigue, the part that’s _never_ fit into this old equation is Shiro. Lance isn’t one for figures, but they’ve been tossing this ball back and forth for months in speculation. The two of them have been close from the start, attached at the hip, but—

_Shirogane, Keith._

That explains as much as it doesn't.

 

1

 

The week before Kerberos departs, looking down the barrel of a year in space and most of it spent more miles distant from Earth than any human has been before, Shiro comes to a decision.

"He's not gonna be able to get updates while we're out there," Matt says over dinner, matter of fact. There's no question who he means.

The person in question opted out of dinner for the second night in a row and that's the only reason Matt is bringing it up. They've both been thinking it for weeks.

Keith is seventeen, the best pilot the Garrison has ever seen, and the best thing that's ever happened to Shiro. He’s a kindred spirit in all things: family-less, a prodigy, apart from everything and everyone on skill alone. He looks at the stars and sees what Shiro sees. He flies like Shiro flies, and better. And more—he's an anchor. In a year, he's become the thing Shiro looks forward to at the end of a long day. They go out on Keith’s hoverbike and everything on his mind spills out on the road behind them.

Offhand mentions and little concerns turn into essays, and Keith listens and watches and drives.

It’s a bad habit with Keith. He makes it easy for Shiro to be something he can’t be with anyone else. He doesn't need to be the best around Keith—he only needs to be what he is. That's enough. It's addictive to be with someone that slots into all his edges just right.

And Shiro wants him.

It's a truth that dawns by degrees—one he tries to outrun for months, though it catches up to him with laughable ease. Shiro wants him the first time he catches a glimpse of Keith's corded muscle and lithe body in the showers. Shiro wants him the first time Keith pins him in a spar, the two of them breathless and hot and close. Shiro wants him later that night, when Keith asks offhand if he wants to go stargazing. That's the first time he takes Shiro out on hoverbike, into the night and the desert and the winter air. It was cold, but Keith was warm like a furnace in his arms, and his hair was soft against Shiro’s nose and mouth.

So he gives up denying it and settles into a life of keeping it low. He lets himself look and want and practices the art of subtle glances and shame. What he has with Keith isn't good—it's the best. It’s the best thing he has and the best he ever will. In moments when he lets himself imagine coming clean, the horrified look his mind draws across Keith's face is enough to convince him it's viable to say nothing for the rest of his life.

"I know," he tells Matt, not able to keep the worry out of his voice.

A year without Keith, without a picture or a word. It’s all he’s thought about. There's nothing they can do about it, not without breaking rules and protocol. If he had any sense he'd be putting some distance between them, softening the blow for both of them before it hits in earnest, but no. That was never an option. Not with Keith.

Matt forks some casserole around his plate, glum. The crowd in the cafeteria is dying down; they're almost alone with their nerves. If Matt's anything like Shiro—and he is—he's been stressed. Kerberos is a mass of concern they're both trying hard to be more excited about than worried. Keith is a separate, immediate thing; he's a worry they can do something about.

"I mean..." Matt starts and trails off and Shiro waits for him to gather his thoughts. They're desperate and beggars can't be choosers. "He can't get updates, but that's only because he doesn't have clearance. You could always just..."

He trails off and he's got a look on his face like the casserole was cursed. When he speaks again his voice is a whisper on the edge of a joke.

"You could always marry him."

The words are a slap. He wants Keith, but wanting and having are worlds apart, _galaxies_ apart—at least as distant as Kerberos is from their table. 

Matt picks up his plate before Shiro can pick up his jaw, not giving him time to argue.

"Just a thought," he mutters on his way out the door.

 

* * *

 

Shiro is only human.

When Keith offers to take him for out for a ride that evening, he doesn't hesitate. The launch is only a week away, so he shoves Matt's words in the box in the back of his mind where he's been shoving all the stress he pretends not to have and resolves to enjoy it. The bike is still the closest he can get to Keith with plausible deniability, anyway.

“You should get a helmet,” Shiro nags when Keith pulls up outside. It's teasing; Keith's never needed one. That's not how it works, but Keith's always seemed a little invincible.

Instead of responding, Keith rolls his eyes and kicks it into gear, waiting for Shiro to settle in behind him. “Hold on,” he says like Shiro isn’t already plastered to his back. He's got both arms wrapped so far around Keith that he could lift him up in the air if he held any tighter.

He loses track of time pressing his face against Keith’s hair, trying not to think about a year away from him, a year away from _this_. The bump as Keith parks the bike some indeterminate time later shakes him out of it.

"Where are we?" Shiro asks.

He feels more than sees Keith's shrug. "I'm not sure. But I like it out here. It's quiet." Keith steps off and holds out a hand—and that’s something else. It’s a small gesture, polite and unnecessary and unaffected. It would never occur to him not to offer.

The night around them is cool, but there's a full moon lighting up the cliffs. In the distance, the Garrison's lights send up a glow like a halo, but they're far enough away that he can't see the shuttle for once.

Maybe that's why Keith chose it—it's a chance for them both to escape for a while. Nothing but stars and rock and wind and Keith. He blooms in the quiet. All his scattered pieces come together to something solid and steady, and his hand is warm where it's still holding Shiro’s. He lets go while he finds them a spot to sit and watch the sky.

There's something off though. The way he’s carrying himself is unfamiliar, a version of Keith he hasn’t seen in months. He didn't notice while they were on the bike, but he's hesitant, like he’s thinking about every step and word before he makes it—like he’s scared he’s going to do something wrong. Shiro pauses by the bike, watching him, trying to figure out what the difference is.

“You’ll be fine while I’m gone, right?” Shiro asks without meaning to.

Keith doesn’t look at him. When he answers, the tone is wrong. “Yeah, of course.”

He’s always been a bad liar.

They settle on the ledge, more than close enough to touch. Even lying flat on the ground, he’s got his arms wrapped around himself. It's fall, but the rock is still warm from the sun—it's not that cold.

Of course he's worried. Keith has two friends in the world and they're both leaving him for a year at least. Not a word, not a single message. He'll be alone again like he was the first time they met.

This, _all_ of this—asking if he can drag Shiro out into the desert for a night with an apology playing at the edge of his mouth like he doesn’t know there’s nowhere else Shiro would want to be more, and the cast of his eyes when he showed up at Shiro's door to ask. He looked cautious like he hasn't in months.

That’s the moment Shiro realizes what he's seeing—this is Keith before he runs. Maybe not in a week or a month, but if he leaves Keith he's going to lose him. Space doesn't scare him. Ten months in the cold and black, the claustrophobic tightness of a space suit, everything that can go wrong billions of miles distant—it’s nothing compared to the thought of coming back to find him gone.

Keith rolls his head and meets his stare. He hadn't realized he was staring. "You ok?"

There's moonlight in his bangs.

 _You could always marry him_ , Matt joked.

"I'm great," Shiro says, but it comes out breathless and wrong. He's going to lose this, and there won't be anything worth coming back to. Everything seems bigger in the dark, everything seems worse, and he's so used to Keith's presence in his space and mind. Being with Keith is like being home.

That's the moment. That's when he knows what he's going to do. It's selfishness and it's cowardice, and it's all he's got.

He swallows and says, "I need to ask you for something."

A favor, he frames it. Keith nods, ready to agree before he’s even heard what it is.

"I don't have anyone else," Shiro starts, and that at least is honest. "And we can only have family at the launch. We can only talk to family on the mission, and you—it would just be a technicality. We can dissolve it when I get back, but—“

It stops in his throat.

Keith is so open, and so unwitting. He’s got a blind spot for Shiro as wide as his heart. For a moment he thinks he won't be able to get the question out in the face of that trust, but then he has another waking nightmare of coming back to find him gone without a trace, irretrievably lost, and the question trips out of his mouth.

“Will you marry me?”

He expects Keith to reel back. It’s an overstepping of all the boundaries Shiro has spent their entire friendship picking his way around, respecting, helping him shore up and find his place in.

Keith’s eyes go wide and there’s a moment where Shiro braces himself for rejection, but then he grins, teeth visible even in the dark, taking the violation in stride. "Yeah. Of course."

Of course.

“It's just a formality,” Shiro hears himself say, stuck somewhere between regret and desperation, between talking them both out of it and trying to convince Keith, as if Keith still needs convincing.

Keith swallows and looks away, back to the sky. “Yeah. Just a formality.” He bumps his knee against Shiro’s leg. “It'll be fun.”

Easy, again. Keith makes it too easy. They’re quiet for a moment, and Shiro takes the opportunity to wonder what he’s done, even as something giddy starts to kick its way through his chest, side by side with foreboding.

But Keith surprises him again with a laugh. It’s rough, almost a bark. He's got a good laugh. “Can you imagine the look on Iverson's face when he finds out?” he asks, and there’s nothing left in Shiro but joy.

 

* * *

 

That joy lasts only until he’s at the door to Iverson’s office.

Telling Iverson is easy in concept, but in practice, it occurs to Shiro the second after he's knocked on the door that Iverson is functionally Keith's legal guardian and this is as close as he's going to get to asking Keith’s parents for permission.

The speech he memorized evaporates the moment he steps through the door. A last burst of confidence carries him through the explanation, stumbling and stuttering in nerves—but there’s nothing to fear. Iverson can balk and bite, but in the end he'll give in. No one can take this from them.

Iverson weathers the news in silence, but his eyes go steel-hard. The lack of surprise in them is almost offensive. "Fine," he says almost before Shiro is finished, "but this can't get out."

"Of course, Sir." Shiro nods, taking the win and dismissal for what it is, but he only gets as far as the door before Iverson stops him with a preemptive sigh.

“I know this is closing the barn door after the horse, but it would put my mind at ease if you would keep to your own rooms while you’re on Garrison property, Shirogane."

Shiro winces at the full name and the implication, which isn't as far off the mark as it should be.

He can pretend to high motives all day long, but he's been gathering pieces of Keith’s appeal since the day they met. The shade of his eyes, the muscle over Keith's ribs under his hands when they're on his bike, and the length of his legs wrapped around Shiro's waist when Shiro finds him passed out in some quiet corner with his books and has to carry him back to his bunk. It's enough to patch up the gaps in his imagination. It's enough to be ashamed of.

But suddenly he isn't, and Iverson’s tone bites deep—the implication that he would see Keith as _that_ and only that. There’s more between them. He turns back, enough to eye Iverson from under the brim of his hat and dark bangs.

“Is that any of your business? Sir.”

He says it just to hear it—just to be able to say it. They’ve suffered— _Keith’s_ suffered every nasty word in the book for their friendship. Like you could fuck your way to the best scores in the fighter class—like Keith would. After this, it won't matter. They’ll still be the best two pilots at the Garrison, and they’ll be bound in legal terms. Even if it gets out, there’s nothing inappropriate about anyone can say about the two of them that will stick in the face of signed papers.

Iverson grimaces like he already regrets opening his mouth and asks, “How long?”

“From the start,” Shiro says, and dismisses himself.

 

* * *

 

Matt helps by organizing a bachelor's party for the two of them—joint, of course, on the theme of alcohol to the exclusion of anything else.

"I'm Keith's best man, of course," Matt declares, taking another swig right out of his pilfered whiskey before passing it to Keith. They're all lazing on Shiro’s bed. He's so flushed it's starting to fog his glasses and Keith—

Keith is rosy-cheeked and happy like he only ever is around them. And beautiful. They're all lazing on Shiro's bed and it's not big, but Keith is sitting closer than he has to by several feet.

Shiro grabs the bottle out of Keith's hand to distract himself from the shine of Keith's eyes and his messy hair and the desire still simmering in his gut, even after more shots than he remembered to count. "Why does he get you? I've been your friend longer. I lied to Montgomery for you," Shiro says. He'll lord that over Matt until his dying day. 

Matt shrugs. "I know this and I love you, but—" He shrugs. "Keith is cuter."

Shiro rolls his eyes. There's no arguing with that.

"I'll be your best man," Keith offers to Shiro, a shade off coy, but just for show.

His voice is rough from the alcohol the way it usually is in emotion only, and that’s another one of those pieces he’s been gathering. Shiro has a moment where he isn't sure if he wants to drag Keith to the bathroom and make him drink three glasses of water or climb into his lap and see if he can taste the whiskey in his mouth.

Ridiculous. He takes another pull before Matt snatches the bottle back. "You can't be—fine. But I get to be _your_ best man,” Shiro says to Keith, not sure if his words still make sense, privately marveling at the hand Keith's set on his thigh.

"You already are," Keith laughs. He's a giggly drunk, and what a revelation that is.

Matt tosses a pillow at Keith—misses, somehow, even at three feet—and huffs, "Then wait, what do I get to be?"

Keith falls over laughing, tipping into Shiro's thigh completely. "You can be the maid of honor."

That’s the last conscious thing he remembers about the night.

He wakes up in a pile, with Keith's head on his chest, his arms wrapped high around Shiro’s thigh like a koala. His hair under Shiro's hand is soft and warm with what's about to be the worst hangover of Keith's life. Shiro shifts and Keith wraps his arms tighter around his leg.

Affection floods him in a wave, sweeping away every apprehension. This is something to come home to, he thinks.

That confidence carries him all day. The realization of what he’s done doesn’t hit him until evening, and then it hits so hard it nearly bowls him over right there in the hallway. He expected nerves and cold-feet, but no—it's _joy_. He has to stop and lean against the wall, gather himself where he's gone scattered and giddy. It's not real, he reminds himself, but it feels like it might be.

It feels like belonging, and it feels like love.

 

* * *

 

The ceremony is three days later, short and sweet. Because it wasn't all a lie and because the Garrison has to believe it's real, they make like it is.

Keith turns out at his door in full uniform. Boots polished, gold on his shoulders, hair brushed. That's what pulls Shiro's eye first. He's always had an intensity about him, but that’s when he’s not trying, and this is him with effort put in. It makes him look older, more serious, and Shiro feels his stomach flip a little.

It’s the oddest thought, but once it’s there, he can’t shake it. Keith wasn’t too good for their friendship, but he might be for this. He would never say it or think it, but at seventeen he’s as good a pilot as Shiro ever was. He’ll be better one day, in more ways than that.

“You look good,” Shiro says, wondering if the lump in his throat is anxiety finally catching up with him, or maybe the same undeserved elation that’s been pounding through him since Keith agreed.

Keith smiles and looks to the side, not quite able to meet his eyes. “Thanks.”

He knows Keith would prefer it out in the sun and the desert, somewhere quiet and wild, even if it’s a farce, but Iverson's office is private—and everyone wants to keep it private. The last thing Keith needs is for this to get out. It might not be a scandal, but it's the next best thing. The Holts are already inundated with media and they’re used to it. Keith would wither under attention like that.

It’s selfish of him to ask this, selfish of him to risk it getting out, Shiro thinks with a pang as they make their way into Iverson’s office.

The mid-morning light casts the room in bright colors—Keith, most of all, decked out in his orange and gold. The uniforms have always been hideous, but not on him; somehow, nothing is.

The only two people in attendance are Iverson as witness and some mid-ranking officer Iverson rounded up who knew what to say and how to say it. It’s not exactly the company either of them want, but maybe that’s for the best because the thing in Shiro’s chest is thumping twice too fast. If Matt were there, he’d see through his cool in a second.

The rest is a haze. They sign the papers and then stand in front of each other before the desk and the nameless officer. No rings, but the Galaxy Garrison likes to pretend it's rooted in tradition and they still give out dog tags to anyone on active duty. It only took a moderate amount of cajoling to get a set for Keith with his new name on them.

He came prepared—for everything but Keith.

Shiro says the words first, barely hearing them the past the rush of blood in his ears. And then it’s Keith’s turn, and if he was intense before, it’s nothing compared to the way he looks when he’s about to swear his life away. Shiro trips over the words, and it’s good Keith is solid and knows what he’s doing because Shiro feels like he’s in a trance copying everything Keith does.

And he looks so happy. He looks—content.

The words don't really mean anything, not next to the signed paper, but the _I do_ hits hard. Harder than the signature, harder than the chain he lays around Keith's neck.

It's heavy, like a promise. All that’s left is the kiss.

Keith steps forward and leans up and Shiro is ashamed later of how much he wanted it. His hands on Keith's cheek and in his hair, pulling him up for a kiss, the heat of his breath and the weight of his body pressed that close. It’s supposed to be a peck—something small and perfunctory, but Keith's mouth opens under his. The part of him he didn’t know he was holding back leans into it and he’s gone.

Iverson’s pointed cough is what breaks them out of it. When he pulls away, it’s a revelation. Keith’s lips are red and a little wet, his eyes still closed. When he opens them, the first strands of foreboding thread through Shiro's mind.

Keith like this—open and lovely and his—is more than he bargained for.

Against all logic and Iverson’s glare, he settles his hands against Keith's cheeks again and pulls him in for another kiss that's what the first was supposed to be, chaste and quick. If it's Keith playing along—and it is, of course it is—he's good.

Iverson clears his throat again, harder. They pull apart, but Shiro lets his hand linger on Keith’s cheek, sliding it to his shoulder and using it as a ground for the both of them. He fingers the chain around Keith's neck and Keith looks up at him with a smile.

It’s a heartstopper.

Shiro spends every day after until Kerberos reveling in the remnant memory of Keith's lips against his, and the feeling of belonging to someone. On launch day, Keith is there to see him off and it was worth it just for that—some part of him is still intimidated by a year in space. Keith’s presence is a balm.

Married life is late night messages and video calls and fake kisses pressed to pixelated cheeks—all said, it's the best decision of his life.

Three months in, visual communication goes off. It’s expected. They can still send messages, but he can’t see Keith’s face, and it’s a surprise how hard it is. He types out bored little missives to Keith and waits for the reply, longer and longer each time, and ignores the knowing looks Commander Holt shoots him.

It was worth it, he tells himself—worth it to have this, for as long as he can keep it. In the back of his mind, he starts to make plans for Earth and Keith and something more permanent, something that isn't half a lie.

But he never gets the chance.

 

* * *

 

Everything after their capture is a blur. They take his clothes and his dignity—and the tags. There’s a finality to that loss. Their chances of are escaping are slim and none, but survival nags at him. His terror-hazed mind catches on bright eyes and dark hair and settles into that memory like it’s the eye of a storm.

"Well," Matt says that first night in the cell, shaking with the chill and residual fear that clings to everyone and everything around them, "at least Keith gets to know."

He's right, in the worst way. The thought haunts him. It’ll take months for word to get back, and when it does, the Garrison won’t offer him any slack. Keith wouldn’t take it if they tried. Shiro doesn’t know what they’ll tell him, but it comes down to pinning the supposed failure of the mission on Commander Holt or Shiro, there’s really only one option. The scales between pushing more grief on a widow and her daughter or on one cadet married in secret and don’t balance out.

They’ll call it pilot error, and Keith will run.

In Shiro’s darkest moments he imagines Keith in the desert. Time is untrackable where they are, but he tries to imagine winter sliding into spring, snow crusting the cliffs around the Garrison, Keith a blaze of black and red on the white.

The Galra put him through hell. He learns how to fight and kill, when to hold his tongue and when to bite. His fears reorder themselves constantly in his mind; he loses hours trying to imagine what could scare him more than what he’s already been put through. And then they take his arm and give him one of their own and that blows through all his carefully constructed hierarchies and leaves them for ash.

But through it all, he holds on to Keith in his head like a mantra. Whatever else they take, they won't take that from him.

They don’t, but they try.

 

2

 

Keith finds out about Kerberos like everyone else does.

Love doesn’t afford him any courtesy. There’s no private place to mourn and no time to do it in, nothing but the cold of shock spreading through him and sliding down his spine, freezing him by degrees. He’s numb that first day, and every word and glance slides off him like oil—until they don’t.

The next morning finds him with bruised knuckles and an expulsion, and nothing but his bike and the clothes on his back.

His clothes, and Shiro’s.

The MPs stand by the door while Keith goes through Shiro’s room. They can’t legally stop him. _Collect your things_ , they said, and everything that was Shiro’s is his now. Through the grief he tries to triage what he wants to take with him. Everything, of course.  Everything, down to the little half-empty standard issue bottle of shampoo in the shower because it was Shiro’s and it smelled like him. His hand hovers over it for a moment, irrationally, while the sense memory of leaning over Shiro’s shoulder to look at some simulation playing on the screen and catching the scent of it almost overwhelms him.

In the end, he takes a set of his civilian clothes and his spare uniform. The MPs balk at it, but Shiro bought his greys with his own money and it’s all Keith’s, by right and responsibility.

That wasn’t in the vows they said, but maybe it was implied.

There’s nothing left for him at the Garrison, or, it seems for a bleak moment when he puts some miles between him and civilization, anywhere. There’s a storm on the horizon. He’ll get wet if he stays out in it and part of him wants to be, but the chain around his neck is suddenly conspicuous. He’s gotten used to its weight, but now it means something different. He has a duty to that, still. He owes Shiro, still.

The storm chases him down eventually, but his clothes dry fast in the wind. It’s morning by the time he gets to the nearest town—unaffiliated with the Garrison because there’s some centerless rage in the pit of his stomach that he can’t shake when he thinks about what he lost to them. He buys himself three months worth of canned food with the last of his stipend and a new set of plain clothes and drags it all back to the shack he inherited from his father the day he turned eighteen.

Shiro celebrated the birthday with him over the comms. He and Matt sang a song, and Commander Holt joined in, and even Iverson wasn’t too sour about it.

The shack isn’t a home—not close, but it fits his mood. Bare, worn, at the edge of life, but still useful. It's not a home, but then, nothing without Shiro really is.

For that first week, he throws himself into making it livable. At night he lies on the ratty old couch, trying to decide what to do the next day, making lists, trying not to think. When his mind settles on a thought that isn’t actionable, like the quirk of Shiro’s smile or the way he used to laugh, he tries to shake it off. Sometimes it works.

It’s too much, too soon. Months of quietly missing Shiro didn’t prepare him for all-out loss. Shiro is no more gone than he was the day he left for Kerberos, but now his absence feels like a physical thing. It feels inescapable.

If he lets himself fall in that pit, he knows he won’t be able to climb out.

 

* * *

 

He doesn't go to the funeral, but it finds him anyway.  
  
A month and a day into the desert, he gets back to the shack to find he has company. There’s a silver sedan parked outside in what qualifies as a yard only because there’s part of an old fence still standing to one side of it. The car is coated in a fine layer of dust from the ten miles of dirt road it had to bump down to find him—and _how_ is a mystery. It’s not a Garrison issue vehicle; that’s the only reason he doesn’t turn the bike around and resolve himself to a night in the desert.

That, and the woman standing on the porch. She’s dressed too fine for the sand and dust. Her dress is spotless blue, almost the same shade as the sky overhead. He doesn’t have to get close before he recognizes her—from the launch, and from a year spent sitting across the table from her son at every meal.

Colleen Holt is lovely and kind, but he doesn’t know how she’s survived what she's lost.  
  
He dismounts and approaches, still cautious. The smile on her face is painfully sincere, but even so, it doesn’t reach her eyes.

Introductions are stilted, and his hand is too dirty from a day in the dust and sun for him to offer it to her. “Sorry,” he offers instead, glancing down at his own palm, hoping the why of it is self-evident.

Her eyes go soft at the gesture and he realizes he’s not ready for this, whatever it is.

"Do you want to come in?" He's not good at this but that seems like the right thing to say—until he remembers what it looks like inside. Old books and sheets for curtains, a stained couch for a bed, and a makeshift cinder block table. His whole life held together with spit and bailing wire.  
  
To her credit, all she does is pause on the threshold, taking it in, before she steps inside and turns back to him. The only thing that belies her nervousness is the death grip she has on her purse.  
  
"Sorry. I don't really have any—" What do you offer a guest? Coffee and snacks? There's no hiding the half-eaten can on the cracked table or the bare water bottle. There was a moment in town that first night where he considered getting something harder to drink, but the last time he had anything like that was their wedding night and there are some things you don't need to dwell on.

She shakes her head. “No, no—I just wanted to talk to you. I didn't get a chance at the funeral, and Matt used to talk about you…” she trails off.  
  
Matt's loss is separate from Shiro's, but it doesn't hurt any less. He doesn't have words for either. None that will mean anything to her, at least. A friend lost is nothing compared to a son or a—

"We both lost him,” she says, “and we both lost a husband.”

She says it like an apology, but she's wrong.

Their marriage was a lie, and a lie in bad faith, because Keith wanted it for the wrong reasons. He wanted a family. Someone who belonged to him, more than he belonged to anyone else, and to have that written in clear lines. It was selfish, through and through.  
  
"We weren't— It wasn't real. It was so I'd be able to talk to them. That's all.”

He can't meet her eyes.  
  
There's a long pause, and he thinks he can feel her gaze on him, pitying. "Oh, sweetheart," she says.  
  
When he looks up, she's not looking at him at all. She's staring at the beat-up couch and the ragged blanket—and the slate grey officer's jacket hanging over one arm.  
  
"No, that's not..." That's not what they were. It's him being selfish, again, even with a memory.  
  
When she pulls him into a hug, he doesn't protest, but he can’t make himself lean into it. Touch is unfamiliar after months of quiet. It’s more contact than he’s had with another living thing since Kerberos. The last person that touched him was Shiro.

In the end, she sits down on the couch without a flinch, despite the mess of it, and she talks. She talks about Matt and Commander Holt, and then in quiet, roundabout words, about Shiro. Her words are cyclical, but he reads the message: you can't dwell in mourning. He's not sure if she's saying it more for herself or for him, but it doesn't matter—she's right.

Shiro would be heartbroken at what he's become.

That doesn’t turn out to be the worst of it. When she’s run out of things to say, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a sheaf of papers two inches thick.

“This isn’t really my place,” she says, “but I don’t think the Garrison was going to try to find you—”

They wouldn’t—he made sure they couldn’t. It doesn’t make sense until he sees what’s written on them, and then it clicks into place with a thud he recognizes is his heart skipping a beat. It’s the second will he’s seen in his life, though the first one was short and perfunctory—a deed to the shack his Dad left him and the pink slip for the bike and not much else. Nothing, compared to this.

“I don’t want it,” he hears himself say.

He can’t make himself look at her this time, not for anything. This is his consolation prize: Shiro’s money, and Shiro’s name, and everything Shiro owned. It’s a mockery of what he’s lost.

She cups his face with one hand, trying to make him look up, and he can’t. He _can’t—_

“Keith—”

“No, I don’t want it.” It comes out cracked, almost beyond recognition.

In the end, he buries his face in his hands and pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees stars, hoping he can stop himself from crying by will alone. It doesn't work. She stays close, a hand on his hair, petting, until he has himself under control. He wonders if she did that for Matt when he was a child, and loses himself again.

It’s sunset before he exhausts himself. She leaves him with the papers and a kiss to his forehead and then she’s gone.  

For the first time, the shack seems as pathetic as it is.

 

* * *

 

Shiro left him enough money to make a life out of.

There's a house in the will, too. In some city far to the west, a house full of Shiro’s childhood and all his for the taking if he wants it. The wording of the will is specific and Keith realizes Shiro must have changed it before he left. Nothing was going to go wrong and Keith would have had it by law anyway, but Shiro was always cautious like that. He always took care where Keith was concerned.

He leaves the papers under a stack of worn books on mechanics and resolves to never look at them again.

The problem is that he can’t get the vows out of his head. A year after Kerberos, they still get stuck on loop in the back of his mind like an old song.

It meant something to have that—something concrete to live by where Shiro was concerned. It meant something to have a family, and some part of him can’t let go of what he barely had a glimpse of. It would have been nice.

It was, while it lasted.

But even without the signed papers and the chain around his neck and the vows running through his head on repeat, he realizes after the course of a month—he would still be there. Right there, sitting on the floor of a desert shack with Shiro’s jacket spread over his chest, devoted and lost to it.

The marriage didn't change anything but his name.

In the morning, he takes a ride, finds paintings on a canyon wall, and finds a new way to sate his grief, but it never gets easier. It never gets less heavy, and it never leaves him.

 

* * *

 

The night Shiro comes back there are clouds on the horizon—the kind that tower over the desert like a second range of mountains and always mean a storm is coming or going.

Shiro’s fall lights them up, casts long shadows over the valley. Keith feels it before it comes, excitement stirring up his spine for the first time in months. It's the same feeling he got the first time he saw lines in the rock and knew, and _knew_.

That whole night seems like a dream. He could never be so lucky; it's some minor tear in the fabric of the universe that gave him back the one thing he wanted. He resolves to never take it for granted. He couldn’t if he tried. Grief doesn’t let go of him that easy.

Shiro comes back to him changed. It takes time to comprehend the full breadth of it, but that first morning he lets himself revel in Shiro’s presence even as he tries to slough off the grief dragging at him.

Shiro’s memory might be shot, but he recognizes Keith. That’s enough, he tells himself in the predawn light of the shack, head resting against the arm of the beat-up couch where Shiro is sleeping. It’s bright enough to make out his edges, but the twilight washes him out. It runs all his colors together and the scar and the hair don’t look so different. For a moment Keith lets himself imagine it could be so easy.  

But blood and color are the least of what the Galra took from him, it turns out.

Keith's been so wrapped up in memory for so long that Shiro’s new edges are what he catches on most. All through finding the Blue Lion and space—it’s not the arm or the hair, but the hunch to his shoulders that catches his eye. It’s Shiro’s hesitance, his seriousness, the way he looks into the distance with a little frown creasing his eyes like he’s trying to remember something—and the frustration that follows when he can’t.

And mourning still dogs Keith. The old mantra runs through his head again like it has been for a year, _in sickness and in health_. Keith wants to jam his head against the wall until the words fall out of him. That’s not his place, and it never was—not really. It was for show, for convenience, it doesn’t stand after a year apart and everything they've been through. Shiro doesn't owe him that lie.

Their second night in space, he finds Shiro’s room to have done with it. It’s not a marriage by any metric—not when they’re half a galaxy away from anyone who cared.

The speech is on the tip of his tongue, but what he sees when he steps through the door wipes it all away.

Shiro is sitting at the edge of his bed, holding his head in both hands, still dressed even though the lights have been off for hours. He looks like he’s locked in stasis, expression empty but for the crease in his brow that means nothing good. It’s foreign to the Shiro he knew before Kerberos, but the image is already painfully familiar.

“Headache?” Keith asks. He knocked, but only as a token gesture. He assumed he was welcome like he was back at the Garrison, and maybe that's not his place anymore—

Shiro looks up at him with—relief, like Keith is the best thing he's seen all day. It's a feeling Keith knows by heart.

“I keep trying to remember, but I can’t,” Shiro says quietly. “I don’t know what they did to me.”

He hasn’t spoken about his time with the Galra more than he had to in their chaotic two days. Short explanations, essentials—but he knew the ship they found the Red Lion on and Keith only had minutes to wander around it but Shiro had a year. A _year_ on that ship, or somewhere like it, in torment. Keith has no idea the full extent of what they did to him, but it doesn’t take much to connect the new lines of pain written on his face, the hair, the arm—it follows that they would take more than what’s visible.

And Keith can’t fix it. His own grief at Shiro’s loss still hangs around his neck like the chain Shiro set there. There aren't words to fix this, he realizes. He was never that good with them anyway. His body feels frozen in place, but then Shiro continues, voice painfully sweet.

“I don’t remember much, but I remember you.”

There's nothing bitter or sad in it. He smiles and then closes his eyes, and says, voice tight, “I remember everything about you.”

That's more than Keith deserves—more than enough to have every other thought and intention fleeing his mind. After a year of mourning, that's all he needed to hear. Every part of him reorients, all the parts of him dedicated to mourning shift.

He hasn't got anything if he hasn't got this, and he can't do much, but he can keep this safe. It's selfish to dwell in the lie Shiro built for his convenience, but he can be selfish if it means protecting this. Shiro will never know the difference.

He throws himself into it body and soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm totally overwhelmed with the response this fic has gotten so far. Thank you so much. If you'd like to see the incredible art people have done:
> 
> [the scene from the start of this chapter](http://tonystarkfucksaround.tumblr.com/post/170515642764/the-silver-chain-around-his-neck-is-hanging-loose) | [on twitter](https://twitter.com/softspacedaddy/status/960319308575453184) by [julia](http://tonystarkfucksaround.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [keith injured and having a bad day](https://iamstuckinfandom.tumblr.com/post/169763696053/some-art-i-made-for-a-fic-i-like-so-far-all-you) by [angelicat2](https://iamstuckinfandom.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [the wedding](https://hazelnatcoffee.tumblr.com/post/169940466568/and-he-looks-so-happy-he-lookscontent-the) by [grayson](https://hazelnatcoffee.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to split this into two pieces, so this chapter is a little more subdued and probably won't flow as well, but it's better than leaving you hanging or posting a 15k chapter.
> 
> [[on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/170553148105/chapter-2-o-g-the-m-fic-not-ready-s-e-nd-help)]

3

 

Before they ever see the dog tags—before they have any concrete proof—they wonder. Of course, they wonder.

“Don’t they seem kind of—” Hunk shimmies his shoulders up and down, “—close?”

They do, but Lance has been putting a concerted effort toward not noticing. It’s like Shiro’s hand is surgically attached to Keith’s shoulder and it’s not fair, somehow.

They're fresh off a training run, cooling off in Pidge’s room because it has the majority of cool stuff and the only working computer they've seen since coming to space—at least, that has a keyboard they can actually touch and Altean tech is great but it's not what they're used to.

It only has two games, but beggars can't be choosers. Pidge still has the record in both. She cheated, somehow, Lance is sure.

But Lance doesn't have anything better to do. He's midway through another stirring game of exploding solitaire, trying not to remember and read into the way Shiro’s voice drops on Keith's name every single time.

“Yeah,” Pidge says offhand from where she's resting against the massive pillows she got god-knows-where. Coran gives her all the cool stuff. “Keith was at the launch, too."

That's unexpected.

“The—Keith was at the Kerberos launch?” Lance asks, squinting, because that’s the kind of thing he would have given a leg to see if it had even been an option, which it wasn’t. It’s unfair in the way everything is with Keith. He showed up midway through their second year, best in the class right out the door. And then he got Shiro, too.

Not his undivided attention—Shiro doesn't play favorites like that—but his respect. Shiro looks at him like an equal and it's infuriating.

Mostly it's the touching, though. No one needs to touch that much.

“Is that why he washed out?”

Hunk’s question brings the room to a standstill. Keith washed out because he punched Iverson in the face and Lance spent a full week picking up pieces of the full story from everyone he could. He never pieced together the whole story, but that was fine. The why and how of his explosive exit was secondary to the result: Lance's ticket into the fighter class and a Keith-free Garrison experience. The loss of Kerberos cast a pall over the whole thing, but he was sixteen and it was hard not to let the silver lining blind him.

It makes a horrifying kind of sense, in retrospect.

“Do you think they’re—” Hunk grimaces, fiddling with the new Rover prototype he's been trying to piece together, but he doesn't say anything else. It takes Lance a moment to catch up because no, no, _no_ —

“No!” Lance has to resist the urge to steady himself against the bed. That's not even an option. Takashi Shirogane, adonis of the Garrison, and five and a half feet of bad hair and sweaty boy. No.

He banishes the image before it can form. Not today.

 

* * *

 

 

They _are_ close though. Since they ran into that Garrison field post after Keith and found him carrying Shiro out over his shoulders like he didn't weigh an ounce.

It only gets worse. They're attached at the hip and if Keith isn't staring at Shiro, it's because Shiro isn't in the room. The ship gets demon possessed, they almost get killed by a robot and shot out an airlock, and Keith's first question is:

“Has anyone seen Shiro?”

Lance tries not to roll his eyes out the back of his head.

This is how it is with them. With Keith, specifically. Lance wants to call him a suck up, but suck-ups don’t spend a year in the desert when the object of their hero fantasy disappears in space. Lance knows that, intimately, but it doesn’t get them any closer to understanding what Keith’s deal is.

It's a pet project. Space is boring and when you're stuck with the same six people—two of which regularly sequester themselves in a bubble of shared glances and The Unspoken.

And then they get all get dumped out the side of a wormhole. The mermaids were nice, but evidently Keith and Shiro weren't so lucky.

When Shiro is nestled in the bosom of a healing pod, Keith left as his self-appointed guard, they try to figure out what happened. No one's sure why their Lions stopped working and the rest of the team are doing an analysis that begins with the visual feeds. Well—analysis, more or less.

Less, because Keith pilots the Black Lion. Less, because the feed is intimate, and a shock.

Allura makes a little sound of surprise at what Shiro’s fallen helmet picks up: the Black Lion, standing over Shiro like a god of wrath manifest. They don’t often have occasion to see the Lions in action from the ground. 

Its roar is still echoing over the tinny audio feed when Keith jumps out of the hatch. He lifts Shiro to his feet with both arms around his waist, almost a full lift, and helps him into the Lion and off the feed’s range. He comes back after a moment, picking up the helmet like an afterthought. Up close his armor is coated in dirt. Mentally, Lance tries to put the scene together with Keith's glib description of _we got separated._

“The Black Lion let him pilot,” Allura says faintly, sharing a look with Coran.

“What, like co-piloting?” Pidge asks. “Is that possible?”

Coran shakes his head—not a no, but like he's unsure. There's no precedent, it turns out. None of the original Paladins shared their lions. Once again, Keith and Shiro are the exception.

At the Garrison, rumor flew, but Lance never took is seriously. By the time they reach the Blade of Marmora’s base, he's sure that was a mistake.

 

 

4

 

This, Shiro realizes by degrees, is Keith after he runs.

That first morning back he wants to pull him outside in the quiet of the desert and ask him how long he’s been out there. Months? Years? Did you leave because of me? He knows it though, by the twist of Keith's lips when he says he felt lost and drawn. That's what happens when someone loses everything and that's the cruelest twist to it—that the one outcome Shiro was trying to avoid is the one he might have made inescapable.

Keith, alone.

His hair is longer, wilder. There are new marks on his arms when he pulls off his jacket, and new muscle. It’s Keith he remembers the clearest; it’s easy to pick out the changes in him. He’s got a new attitude and a new silence to him, too—and he used to laugh. Everything about him is evolved a step beyond what Shiro remembers. He’s become something grown and inscrutable.

His eyes have the capacity to hold an amount of emotion Shiro doesn’t feel equipped to deal with. It’s painful. Shiro catches his eye in front of the map board, covered in yarn and notes and photos, and all he can see is blue, and all he can hear is the way Keith’s voice sounds like a thread ready to snap.

There's no undoing that.

He’s still got the chain. He hides it under his clothes, but Shiro notices it that first morning and it’s crushing. The little glitter of it catches his eye and tears him down. It keeps drawing his attention after that—the line of it under Keith's plain shirt, riding the edge of his collarbone where he's lost all his softness.

For that night, he lets it go, but one night rolls into two and three and the chaos of everything they go through doesn't leave room for them to have the conversation they need to. It’s easier to keep letting it slide. His best friend, his lifeline, the one memory he held on to through violence and terror still has Shiro’s name around his neck—you don't question that kind of luck. It's a testament. Even if he loses himself, there’s someone out there who hasn’t.

Keith never asks about his tags and they never talk about that, either.

They don't talk about a lot, it turns out. He only tries to force it once, at the end of a long day, after weeks of Keith acting two shades off right. But Keith brushes him off again.

_Just tired, like you said._

Shiro would have to be dumb and blind to believe it, but Keith's lies always have a deliberate falseness to them, like some small part of him knows he won't be believed and is banking on it, trying to sabotage the attempt. He doesn't like lying—and he doesn't like lying to Shiro. That was true even back at the Garrison.

It's in him to follow. The familiar part of him that he's gotten used to ignoring reminds him, for the hundredth time in half as many days, that Keith has his name around his neck and that it should count for something more than pain.

But he's impossible to pin down 

What did you do out there? Shiro wants to know what it was like living alone in the desert for that long. He wants to know every step of it. If there's a way to follow Keith down that path, he wants to. In his head, he tries to retrace his steps, but the reality pulls Keith away from him every time.

Shiro is still in love with him. That's one piece of him the Galra never took. It's strange because it should feel worn in by now, he's been carrying it around so long—but it's a young love, still. It feels like a school crush sometimes the way it takes him by surprise—a curl up together and sleep love. The kind of love that's embarrassing in retrospect, except that this never is. He's too tired to be ashamed of it anymore, but it's not the place for him.

You've got grey hair, he reminds himself, and scars for days.

So he keeps to his own room and his own bed and his own thoughts—and in the morning, Keith is gone.

When he tells Coran to hail the pod, it comes out harsher than he means it to because worry is pounding through his gut in time with his heartbeat. Keith runs. He always runs. You knew this, he tells himself. More: you knew and ignored it.

In the aftermath, it hits him in full. Keith's plan was to go alone, to let Zarkon hunt him down at the edge of space and take him captive. The thought that he could pilot himself out of danger, out of range of a Galra fleet in a pod is laughable.

His own loss was viable to him. No, Shiro realizes his mistake—not viable, but necessary. There’s a knife’s edge of difference there and Keith has become expert at walking it in the time he was gone. Keith always had the capacity for sacrifice, but it's grown outsize in loneliness. 

I would have written you letters if I could have, he thinks nonsensically. Anything to make it easier for you.

But he can't make himself bridge that gap, retread over all the boundaries he wrecked in Keith and abandoned him to.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time they find the Blade of Marmora’s base, Shiro has had more than his share of bad days. Leading a team of teenagers through a war none of them are prepared for,  the day his team was captured, the day he first fought in the arena, the day they took his arm—

Keith’s trial blows them all away.

He’s like a raw nerve, like a part of Shiro, cut loose and sent off into the world, into a war. There’s no armor for that and Keith keeps giving little pieces of himself away. The knife is the least of it.

Or the last of it.

Giving up the knife was never on the table. He should have said so to Keith, before, in clear terms. Better if they’d fought it out at the start, the two of them back to back. Better if he'd had Keith’s back at all. One more in a collection of little failures he didn’t know he’d been keeping.

“He'll never quit,” he tells Kolivan, realizing it for himself with something like horror.

Kolivan doesn't look at him. “One way or another, this will end.”

He wonders how many of these fights Kolivan has witnessed—he wonders if anyone has ever died. He wonders if he could cut his way to Keith, through stone and metal and flesh, and if Keith would appreciate it if he did. In the most distant part of his mind, he resolves to. The alliance was a wash anyway—some things are worth more. This is worth more.

In the end, the Red Lion makes his decision for him, but that's not the end of it. Not by half.

Keith learns he’s Galra. It’s the punctuation to a day of agonies.

When they get back to the Castle, Keith tells the team flat-out, not even obfuscating, almost like he knew it all along deep down. Shiro has the knee-jerk urge to step in and make it clear that this is new information to Keith, that he wasn't hiding anything, but Shiro stops himself as soon as he realizes how it’ll sound to Keith: like Shiro is apologizing for what he is.

By that point, every fiber of him is worn to breaking. Keith is quiet, undefensive about it, holding the shoulder where he took the worst hit while arguments ebb and flow around him.

Allura doesn’t take it well—but no one does. There’s no way to take it _well._ Shiro is still reeling in some distant part of his mind, but there are introductions to make and a war to plan and the Blades are an asset, but they’re still at every disadvantage. Shiro doesn’t notice Keith’s stillness or the set of his shoulders until they part ways for bed.

The dark of the hallway casts him wrong. There’s an unfamiliar care to Keith’s movements. He's always had the step of a fighter, and he proved it today, but this is something else.

Shiro speaks without thinking. “Keith, wait.”

Keith turns enough to glance back, but his eyes are shadowed.

“Are you alright?” He doesn't mean it to sound so tired. Keith's not a burden; his well-being isn't a duty, but the right words never come to him around Keith anymore.

Keith doesn't hesitate though. “Yeah. Of course. “ As if he would ever be anything but. Maybe it’s Shiro’s own exhaustion playing tricks. There's too much to sort through from their day.

Worry dogs him to bed and chases away any hope of sleep. It's undefinable, except that Keith looked—broken. Except that Keith still has Shiro’s name hanging around his neck, and he's tired of watching and gathering his pain secondhand. Keith's a repository of little sacrifices and the greater part of him is tired of it, finally.

He heaves himself out of bed. So Keith is fine, so Keith turns him away, so he regrets it—Shiro doesn't have anything to lose but Keith. And he's going to lose him to this eventually if he doesn't try.

 

* * *

 

 

Keith doesn't turn him away, but he doesn't let him in either.

The myriad of undefinable worries in the back of his mind solidify when his knock is met with silence. The hallway is dead quiet, dark, his knock echoing over-loud in it.  “Keith?” he tries after a moment.

Nothing.

He could be asleep, but Keith doesn't sleep that heavy—and that's when the alternative hits him. He could be gone, again. The team's reaction and Keith's quiet acceptance come back to him, reframed. The thought barely has time to take form in his mind before he's punching the hidden panel by Keith's door. It slides open and dread’s already formed the shape of what he finds before he can fully understand it.

The room is empty.

He can't make himself move from the doorway or breathe or still the shaking at the edges of his vision, but then he sees the armor on the floor and the knife on his bed. Keith wouldn't leave without it.

He's in the bathroom. Shiro's worry seems ridiculous in context, but he still needs visual confirmation. He's come this far.

"Keith?" The door doesn’t open for him, even when he knocks. There's a sound from the other side, muffled and foreign. It takes a moment to identify it as a sob. The panic stampeding through Shiro's chest kicks into double time. 

He's never seen Keith cry. Not in all their time together, not out of frustration or hurt or sorrow.

He knocks again, harder. "Keith, I need you to let me in right now." He tries to put some authority into it, but instead he sounds terrified to his own ears. "Please."

Nothing, again. For a brief moment he thinks he's going to have to cut his way in, ship be damned. He gets as far as raising his arm to power it, but then there's the sound of what must be Keith slapping the control panel. The door slides open all at once, no slow reveal, so it takes a second for Shiro to understand what he's seeing.

Keith has his body suit unzipped around his waist, and he's ruined.

The cuts the Blades left on him aren't healed or bandaged—he put his body suit and armor on over them, left them to bleed and bruise. He's got one hand over his eyes, pressed in tight, the other braced on the counter against the way his body is shaking.

Shiro is silent in shock for too long. Keith pulls his hand down from his eyes, sees the look on Shiro’s face and turns away. His back is worse, somehow. The suit left circular welts in his neck, and there's a contusion under the dried blood over his ribs that looks like it's bruised down to the bone.

This is what's been under his armor since they left the base. Through everything, _this_ —

"Keith..." His voice cracks. There aren't words for what this day has been, and he wants to pull Keith into a hug, but there's nowhere safe to touch. He does anyway—steps forward, sets his hand at the top of Keith's spine, right under his hair, over the chain that's impossibly still hanging around his neck, trying to be something solid.

Keith flinches away, gasping on a sob.

Everything in Shiro hinges on that sound. It's a moment he knows he's going to remember for the rest of his life: Keith hunched over the sink in pain and exhaustion, bereft, and Shiro, inches away and powerless to help. Inches away, at the edge of something.

He's spent so long mired in what he isn't, in what he can't be—but he's still something to Keith. Moreso than anyone else on the ship or on Earth, or anywhere. And Keith deserves one good thing. Shiro can be that much. 

With deliberate care, Shiro lays his hand back against Keith's neck, but this time when Keith moves away, Shiro presses in, keeping his hand there until Keith's shudders subside. Keith is some wounded, wild thing, and he doesn't trust, but he trusts Shiro more than anyone else and that's an advantage Shiro can use.

They don't talk; Shiro strips the rest of his armor off of him in silence, except for the hiss he can't stifle when he sees the bruising on Keith's hip and the way his ankle is swollen. In his head, he starts trying to decide if the basic medical training the Garrison required him to learn will be enough for this. He doesn't talk. Keith makes enough noise for both of them, thready breaths and little hiccuping sobs tearing their way out of him like he's too tired to keep them at bay.

Shiro works the body suit down his legs, Keith stepping out of it without complaint despite the concerning swell to his ankle, and then he's bare. It's not a first between them, but it's been a while, and he's never looked like this.

 _You need a healing pod_ , Shiro thinks, but whatever is wrong goes deeper than skin and bone. Keith should look smaller out of his armor, but the way he's braced on the counter still makes the muscle in his back stand out. Strong, and solid, and a little broken.

And he's still crying. There aren't words to fix this.

Shiro soaks the blood off him with a damp, warm cloth, leaving the water running hot in the sink until it fogs the mirrors, because the last thing Keith needs is the cold. It takes so long he gets lost in it: the wet slide of the cloth over muscle and skin. Down his neck, soaking away sweat, and over his spine and the blades of his shoulders, where blood pooled in the suit. And lower, soothing the welts the circuits of the suit left over his hips.

Getting him to turn is a challenge. It's part stubbornness, part pain. In the end, Shiro has to pull his uninjured arm— _less_ injured arm—off the counter and up to his own shoulder so he has something to hold on to.

It's clumsy, but it works. Shiro wipes the tears off his face, and the sweat out of his hair and moves down. His shoulder is the worst part; that's what bled the most.

The chain around his neck glitters beside the wound, a little mocking. You give the boy your name and take everything from him and you can't even keep him safe when you're right there watching. Shiro knew he was still wearing it, but when it's all he's wearing, it feels different. The way it lays against Keith's chest sends an unearned heat skittering up Shiro’s spine for the first time since before Kerberos, and shame close behind it.

As always, Keith is a surprise. Desire was something else he thought the Galra took from him. He buries it and turns Keith back to face the sink while he bandages the wound.

When Keith is warmed and clean and pink and there's no need at all to keep going, Shiro can't make himself stop, and doesn't try. There’s something needful in it. The motions skip past anything perfunctory and right into indulgence. Touching to touch, touching to comfort and soothe the both of them, for what it’s worth.

Through it all, Keith doesn't stop crying. Not sobs, but little, shuddering, watery breaths, and tears. He shouldn't have that many in him, Shiro thinks, but the terror of seeing it has worn off.

The day he found out he was half Galra, and fought until he dropped, and lost his team's trust, and saw his best friend walk away from you. Saw the man who hung his name around your neck walk away from you.

That hasn't counted for much. He thought it could, once, and maybe it's time he tried.

He dispenses with the cloth, and all pretense, tracing the edge of a bruise with the tips of his metal fingers. “Does it hurt?”

It’s not a real question, but there has to be something that can get him to talk. And he needs Keith to talk.

“No.” Keith’s voice cracks on the lie.

“Keith—“

“I’m not human. How do you know if I feel pain the same way you do?” The question is a shock, but it shouldn't be. He's always been introspective to a fault, and of course this is where his mind would spin. He wipes his eyes and nose like he’s angry at his own tears and it pulls at something right down the middle of Shiro to see it.

Keith despises half-truths and coddling. There’s a way through this conversation, but it’s a maze of thorns and things that could break him—or break them, in worse and permanent ways.

He takes his time, testing the edges of Keith’s bruises, digging his fingers in where the pressure won’t hurt more than it’ll comfort, trying to think of what he can say that’s both honest and kind.

“I remember the first time we met. You were in the gym, and it was so late I couldn’t figure out if you’d gotten up early or stayed there all night—“

Keith bows at his words, the knobs of his spine sticking up at the base of his neck, right under Shiro’s hand, like he’s losing his ability to hold himself bit by bit. The chain clinks with the movement.

“I’ve known you longer than anyone here. Everything you have, you’ve earned.”

Keith takes a deep, shuddering breath, and when he speaks it's almost too soft to hear. “Not you,” he says.

It brings Shiro up short. “...You don’t get to earn people.”

You hope that you can be worthy of them, though. You hope that when they’re in this much pain, you’ll be able to do something about it. The only consolation is that he’s not still crying, but only because he’s too tired to, Shiro realizes. Tired in all the wrong ways, for all the wrong reasons.

“You've had me from the start. I would never leave you like that.”

Like the hologram, he means and that was the worst part of the entire ordeal. That’s what Keith thinks: that love is earned, that he’s too selfish to deserve Shiro’s, that Shiro would ever walk away from him in pain.

What else had it told him? _We're all the family you need._ That's what Keith gets out of this—something so small, something so mundane he shouldn’t have to trade something precious to keep it.

“Ok,” Shiro says, when he can’t let it go any longer and realizes he's out of options. “Come on. You’re sleeping with me.”

The audacity of it has the intended effect. Keith’s head rises against Shiro’s hand in surprise. “What?”

Shiro doesn’t answer but leads by following, pushing Keith ahead of him and back into the room. He rips the blanket off Keith's bed—that’s the only thing on it, the only thing in the room aside from his pillow and his armor and clothes—and wraps it around Keith. He holds it clasped without complaint, too tired to argue maybe.

The hallway is empty, but it doesn't matter; he’s had enough of this day, too, and the glare he's been nursing will send anyone scurrying before they have a chance to make it worse. Shiro’s room is close, and almost as empty as Keith's, but there's a possessive bent to it. Keith, in his space, somewhere he can be protected.

Shiro pushes him down on the bed. Keith is too tired to be timid about his nakedness—but he still curls into himself under the blanket like he has something to hide. It isn’t exhaustion or pain. It should be, by rights, but there’s something else.

He's ashamed, Shiro realizes. Not of his body, but—

He’s Galra, and he's ashamed, like Shiro will be able to see his mixed blood written in clear lines over his chest.

Like it would matter.

There has to be a way to fix this, but he’s still drawing blanks.

He pulls a shirt out of his drawer while he stalls for time. It’s one of three things he owns, he realizes. On Earth he had a bright future and a handsome salary, but here all he has are the clothes on his back. Keith deserves more, deserves better, but when Shiro holds it out, Keith’s eyes go sad.

"I can't. It's yours,” he says, nonsensical.

"What's mine is yours. And it’s all I’ve got. You’ll get cold.”

Before Keith can protest again, Shiro pulls the shirt over his head. It makes Keith's hair go messy—messier than it already was, after a day of fighting and the impromptu bath. He hasn’t been a boy in years, but between the disheveled hair and the oversize shirt, he looks young in a way that pulls at something behind Shiro's ribs. He wants to draw Keith in, bend around him, keep him close.

He kneels instead, right in Keith's space. With as much care as he can muster he takes Keith’s head in his hands and presses his lips to his forehead.

“You’re the best thing I have. And that’s never going to change,” he breathes against Keith’s damp hair.

They’re the right words, finally.

Keith sinks into him, wrapping his arms around Shiro’s back in a hold so tight he shakes with it. The face pressed against Shiro's neck is wet again, but it doesn't feel so bereft this time. Shiro traces a hand up and down his spine, around the bruises he memorized, and has to stop himself from smiling.

Somehow, in a day of alliances and progress, this feels like the greater victory. Being needed, being the right thing at the right time. It makes him feel whole—or closer to it than he has in a year.

When he wakes up hours under the covers, Keith’s hands are curled between them. Shiro can feel them against his chest, fingers brushing his skin in a way that feels more intimate than it is.

It's novel to share a bed, but Keith is quiet and warm and there's something nice about not being alone with his thoughts for once. Even in sleep, Keith’s presence bears away his worries.

It shouldn't be that simple.

 

* * *

 

It’s a feeling he chases.

They run drills that day to show off for the Blades and for once it works out. Lance even manages a solid kick without sending them all toppling over. When they get back to the hangar, Keith pulls off his helmet and he's still a bruise under the armor but there are no bags under his eyes. When he smiles at Shiro, it's a grin he hasn't seen in weeks.

That evening he finds Keith on the observation deck, still up by habit and accord, bathed in cool green. It’s their place to talk. Shiro doesn't want to ask him if he's okay again, but he doesn't have to. Keith smiles at him and shares a look and for an instant they're back in the desert with his bike gleaming somewhere behind them in the dark.

But last time they were in that position, he made a mistake.

“Sorry for last night,” Keith offers first. He's sorry for breaking down, but it's the first time since the mission left that Shiro’s felt useful to him. Keith needs him in a way the team doesn’t. It’s more basic, more human, and now that he’s had a taste of that grounding, it’s all he wants from this.

“Well,” Shiro feels his lips turn up in a wry smile, tries to make it a joke, “my room is your room.” _My bed is your bed._ “We're married, after all,” he tacks on because he can’t help it.

Keith goes red. He looks shocked. “But—”

Another mistake.

“It's fine,” Shiro says, trying to soothe him and keep the tightness building in his throat at bay. It's embarrassment, maybe. Embarrassment, hopefully, because if it's not then it's something like heartbreak and they don't have time for that. Not over something so small and insignificant. “It was just an offer.”

Keith doesn't take him up on it.

Even after months, the ship doesn't feel like home—not more than the Garrison did, and space is cold in ways that get under his skin still. Everything seems bigger in the dark. Small thoughts grow and warp and he's almost resigned himself to a night without sleep when the door slides open.

Keith shuffles in, quiet as a whisper.

Shiro recognizes him by his steps and by his breath and by the clink of the chain around his neck when he slides under the covers. He does it without a word—as if Shiro won't notice.

He settles at the edge of the bed, facing away, but the ship bunks aren't that wide and Shiro can feel his heat. It's enough to dispel the cold that lingers in him; the solid metal of his new arm saps heat like it's carved from ice sometimes. Shiro reaches out, absent-minded, brushing the knuckles of his new hand over the thin cloth covering Keith's shoulder blade. Keith’s breath stops for a moment, but then he presses back against the touch. Shiro lulls them both to sleep with the motion.

It becomes routine over the course of a week.

That's how long it takes to form a habit, Shiro remembers some instructor telling him, but it doesn't feel like it takes that long. The muscle memory of opening his arms to something warm is instilled by the third night.

Keith is almost unnaturally hot, and he sleeps restless; Shiro gets used to waking up sweating, with a hand in his face or a leg curled around his hip. Or sometimes with the blankets half kicked off and Keith tucked under the weight of Shiro’s arm, Shiro holding him down where he won't be able to roll them both awake.

By the second week, he can't imagine waking up any other way. He forgets it isn't real, and it starts to bleed over. When they get up in the morning, they shuffle into the ship’s kitchen together.

There's nothing inherently intimate about it, but the first morning it happens, Lance’s eyes get wide.

The second, it's all of them. Even Allura is side-eyeing from her spot at the head of the table, and Shiro realizes he's got a hand on Keith’s shoulder, guiding him around.

He pulls away like he's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Keith shoots him a confused look, and Shiro gets stuck between the little voice that's telling him there’s nothing wrong with a lingering shoulder pat between friends and the one whispering _you're married, touch all you want._

Keith doesn’t mind. Touch is unique between them. From the first time Shiro pulled him into a hug and felt him melt into it, it’s been his one advantage. 

That's a slippery slope, as it turns out.

All deniability is shot to hell a few days later when Keith hands him a bowl of the most tolerable Altean oatmeal alternative they've been able to rustle up. It's warm and smells familiar, almost like cinnamon, and Shiro presses a kiss to the soft hair at Keith’s temple in thanks without thinking about it. Keith leans into it, and there's nothing weird about that between friends—between _married_ friends—until he turns to the table, just in time to see Lance’s spoon fall through his fingers, goo dribbling from his open mouth.

And yeah. Maybe out of context, that's a little much.

 

* * *

 

The first morning Shiro nudges him into waking and he whines like they're back at the Garrison and Shiro is trying to get him up for a training session he forgot he agreed to. He starts smiling again at small things. It seems like it works, but nothing is that easy. 

Keith gets hurt, again, because their life is dangerous and Keith is the tip of their spear in almost every fight. He goe harder and faster and does what he can because he can. It's a reason to love him, but it's not the only reason. If Keith knows that, if it matters to him, Shiro can't tell.

Two hours after Pidge and Lance leave on mission, Hunk looks over at Shiro on the bridge and Shiro can already read the anxiety in the set of his shoulders. “I think we lost contact,” Hunk says. "I think something happened."

His instincts are impeccable. There's a chance it's a malfunction with the comms, but they're never that lucky, and infiltration isn't exactly a fine art when you're in Paladin armor and a Lion. Chances are something went wrong. Chances are, Keith was in the middle of it. 

The thought takes him aback, even as he's settling into the Black Lion's cockpit. Keith isn't the only one that matters in this situation, but he's the only one Shiro was counting on waking up next to in the morning. It matters.

Comms are down the whole flight out, When he lands and sees what's waiting for him.

He has to hold himself back from biting out a curse. There's blood on Keith's neck and chest and the goddamn chain is coated in it, in full view. Shiro hides it, but only because he knows how Keith would feel if the team saw. It might already be too late. 

"What happened?" Shiro asks, low by his ear, trying to ignore the tang of blood in the air. It's different, he realizes. It's different when you spend your nights with someone and have to see them like this.

Keith coughs, and it's more blood than air, but just from what's wetted his mouth. Nothing internal, hopefully. "Bad day," Keith mumbles, which makes as much sense as anything. 

"Just bad, huh?" He doesn't waste time arguing it.

There's nothing he can do about this, he reminds himself. He can't stop Keith from being what he is. He can't get mad at him for being true to himself. Sometimes all you can do is pick up the pieces—literally, he thinks, resettling the weight in his arms as he walks back to the Lion through the smoke and dust.

But it’s a bad omen.

Keith is always first, always fastest—always protecting him. It’s like he thinks he’s only worth as much as he can give, and once Shiro notices the pattern, it’s everywhere. 

He throws himself into duty, Shiro realizes, sopping the blood off him in the bathroom. It’s a mirror image to the last time they were there, except this time Keith isn’t crying. He’s passed out exhausted, no permanent damage, nothing that needs a healing pod. That's a sorry consolation. Only one bad cut, only a few bruises, only a little hurt—only a near brush with death. He’s making excuses for the inexcusable.

Shiro had to carry him into the bathroom and strip him, prop him on the counter. Keith can’t raise his head. There’s nothing alright about it.

“You don’t need to do this,” Shiro says, knowing Keith can’t hear him. Even as he says it, he realizes where the mistake is. In Keith’s mind, there’s no equation. There’s no list of pros and cons. He does what he thinks needs doing, because he has to, and it’s not a death wish. The Trial comes back to him, and the sounds Keith made in pain, and his tears afterward. He’s never been silent in pain or grief—but he doesn’t run from it either. He’s brave like that.

And Shiro is proud in the saddest way, exhausted in worry. They’ve been there before. How many times, he wonders. Keith won’t always scrape through. Eventually, they’re going to come up on the wrong side of this, and he won’t have a leg to stand on. It's like knowing Keith will run and letting him go. It's negligent, but there's no easy solution. He can't tie Keith down, and he wouldn't want to. 

It frustrates him to no end. There's some crucial piece he's missing, some perfect sentence that will help Keith understand that living with honor and _living_ aren't mutually exclusive.

He carries Keith back into their room—their room, now, past all pretense—and lays him in bed, climbing in after him and not bothering to keep some careful distance. He wraps his arms all the way around Keith, not minding the weight, so Keith is tucked against his torso and he can reach up to hold the chain loosely. 

Of all his mistakes, that's the worst. He painted himself into a corner with that lie.

He framed it as a favor, knowing Keith would never object, and bound him up in it; he sees it now for what it was. Never leave me, come save me, comfort me, fight a war with me, stay by my side through all of it. Give up your life for mine.

Just a favor.

If he could do it over, he would do it in full faith, and maybe Keith would understand what he's worth. But it's already tainted. You can't build love on lies and rot. That's not how it works. He's younger than they give him credit for, but he knows that much.

Keith rolls and snorts into the pillow like it’s any night.

And he can’t possibly let this go, he realizes. He’s as selfish as he was the night he asked Keith to marry him—that hasn’t changed. Torture and war and captivity don’t make you less willing to hold on to the people you love, and Keith is first in his heart, still. Always.

You don’t earn people, but maybe you can try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think next chapter is like 200% action OTL
> 
> Come chit chat with me on [tumblr](http) or put me on mute on [twitter](https://twitter.com/awahiw)!
> 
> I'm still so overwhelmed by the response this has gotten. There is some incredible fanart for this chapter, and thank you seriously. I can't make words right:
> 
> [a beat up sheith hug](http://jaja-han.tumblr.com/post/170561842345) by [jaja](http://jaja-han.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [keith post trial](https://twitter.com/v_0_3/status/960896738759462912) by [v-0-3](https://v-0-3.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Kinship](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856949) by [Angelicat2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelicat2/pseuds/Angelicat2)




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